March Mojo Dojo

Scott Glazer called me Tuesday about playing with his group Mojo Dojo Wednesday night at Blind Willie's. What a great group of guys he'd assembled--John Sandfort on tenor sax, Brandon Bush on keyboard, Micah Caldwell on guitar, Justin Chesarek on drums, and Scott on bass! I had a wonderful time listening, hanging out, and hanging on with the high level of musicianship. Maaaaan! Everybody played well, and everybody was really cool. One of my favorite times playing this gig.

Vegas 2017

What a crappy weekend for Daylight Savings Time! We made it to our hotel in LA around 2 AM, which instantly became 3 AM (spring forward!), and then we were out the door back towards Las Vegas at 8 AM. Ouch.

pit stop

This week's Vegas gig was a corporate event at Mandalay Bay. It's our fourth year playing this event, though the format has changed from an "American Idol" style show with seven or eight featured songs to more of a "Tonight Show" band thing, playing short snippets of songs (around fifty-five in total) to cover the transitions between speakers, awards, and video presentations.

We made it back to Vegas around lunchtime, ate, set up, and sat around at a rehearsal for a few hours. Very little music was made. Thank god for the mindlessness of smart phones. We were released around 7 PM.

Previously, we've always stayed at Mandalay Bay, but this year our hotel rooms were next door in the Luxor. I was curious to see what rooms would look like inside the pyramid, but unfortunately we were housed in adjoining towers.

Monday: Elvis is still here, though he's dressed for the show in Hawaii.

Day 2 of rehearsals was more of the same; lots of phone gazing and the occasional musical vamp. We got out early, which was confusing because we still hadn't played the show all the way through (and we had the next day off completely).

Meanwhile, Kip took the van out for repairs. Three news studs, brake job, and tire repair.

(photo cred: Kip!)

Monday night was pizza night, so we all took a field trip to Grimaldi's Pizza in The Venetian. Excellent New York pizza.

We exited a side door out of The Venetian, so we walked to The Wynn for taxis. Behold the light show at The Wynn!

Tuesday: Day off. Greg, Monkeyboy, Pete, Nick, and I borrowed the van for a sightseeing adventure to the Hoover Dam. Before the dam, Nick led us on a hike through the Arizona desert.

The hike took us to the top of hill overlooking Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the Hoover Dam. Quite a view.

On the way back to Vegas, we stopped at the Hoover Dam.

The "bathtub ring" shows how low Lake Mead has gotten in the last ten years--down over one hundred feet.

I would like to know how many cell phones have accidentally slid down the face of the dam.

photo cred: Greg Lee!

The Luxor at night.

Wednesday: Show day! We had a big rehearsal (but still didn't make it through the entire show) and then the actual performance back to back.

Run time for the show itself was around two and a half hours-a very long time to sit there! Our performance was really solid. I was too focused on it to notice much else going on in the arena.

After the show, we all went our separate ways to go eat, relax, or pack, but at some point in the evening, we all made the pilgrimage over to see TJ Tyler in Mandalay Bay, still giving the people a strong Sinatra performance.

Thursday: Take me home!

Vegas and LA

The beginning of a long week.

Friday: We assembled at the Atlanta airport for our flight to Las Vegas, where we would meet our gear and faithful crew of Kip and Zach for a public performance at the Silverton Casino. The van and trailer had left three days and 2,000 miles earlier.

Atlanta legend Bill Hatcher, stationed at the airport

over Bovina, Texas

over Kingman, Arizona

Lake Mead in the distance

over Henderson, NV

over Las Vegas

The gig was a public show at the casino's event facility, which was sort of a permanent tent off the side of the main building. The whole thing was rather surprising--1. that anyone would show up, 2. that anyone would know who we were, 3. that the place actually sounded pretty good! A nice size stage and an easy load in, and one ninety minute set eased us back into gigging.

Saturday: Mid morning, we loaded up the van and headed to Los Angeles. The local crew guy in Vegas tried to scare us into thinking it would take eight hours with traffic (for a four hour trip), but we fortunately didn't believe him.

I'd never made this trip across the desert before. It's really beautiful.

We made a pit stop in the middle of nowhere (Baker, CA).

After lunch in Fontana, CA, we were making great time, and the guys decided to add a little air to one of the van tires. Kip noticed that the tire was leaking at the valve stem and opted to swap it out for the spare.

In the process of removing the lug nuts, one of the wheel studs broke off. The two neighboring lug nuts proved to be especially difficult, and were later determined to be stripped.

After an hour of work, they got the good wheel on the van and we were on our way.

Our first LA show since last year's Club Bahia dud was at the legendary Roxy Theatre on Sunset Strip. Tickets sold out the day before (500 person capacity). Super cool!

We had a camera crew in tow for this one. Here they are getting footage of us ordering pizza.

The show was amazing! Everybody was really pumped about the gig, and the wave of excitement in the first set was was incredible. We had the guys from the Beyond Yacht Rock podcast open the show, and Elliot Lurie and Matthew Wilder came and sang their hits (Brandy and Break My Stride) with us. An audience member sang along to Africa with his hand over his heart. A guy held his phone aloft as it continuously scrolled "MONKEYBOY!!!!" during the guitar solo on Hotel California. As for me, I had a big solo on Biggest Part of Me, accompanied by the voice in my head screaming THIS IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW AT THE ROXY IN LA!!!!! THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!

Big night for the band. We came; we saw; we conquered!